More COVID deaths in Tri-Cities as new case rates tick upward elsewhere. Boosters urged

Three more recent deaths from complications of COVID-19 were announced this past week in the Tri-Cities area, even as new case rates continue to be low.

A Benton County woman in her 40s and two Benton County men in their 90s died.

Public health officials are seeing severe illnesses in elderly people who may have received their initial vaccinations but then did not get boosters, said said Heather Hill, infectious disease supervisor for the Benton Franklin Health District, speaking on the Kadlec on Call podcast.

“I think boosting for COVID is really going to be the name of the game for quite some time to come,” she said.

The three deaths announced this past week bring the total for the month to date to six, which puts April on track to be the least deadly month for COVID to date in 2022.

In March, 27 recent deaths were reported and there were 43 deaths in February, up from 21 in January.

The Benton Franklin Health District announces recent deaths once a week.

The deaths announced this past week bring the total deaths from complications of COVID-19 in the Tri-Cities area since the start of the pandemic to 675. They include 463 residents of Benton County and 212 residents of Franklin County.

In the Tri-Cities, local public health officials verify that deaths are due to COVID complications by checking for a positive test result and that a coronavirus infection was named as a primary cause of death on the death certificate.

It can take several weeks for the district to receive and reconcile death information due to the reporting processes of medical facilities and coroner offices and the process of issuing and releasing death certificates.

Statewide, 12,619 residents have died of complications of COVID since the start of the pandemic, including 53 people added to the tally since last Friday, according to the Washington state Department of Health.

That is down from 56 deaths the previous week and 78 deaths reported the week before that.

Tri-Cities COVID cases

The new case rate of COVID-19 has started to rise in some parts of the United States and in a few Western Washington counties, Hill said.

But the Tri-Cities area new case rate dropped to just under 17 new cases per 100,000 people in the past week from 20 a week earlier.

However, the number of known new cases in Benton County increased by 19%.

Cases in Franklin County continued to fall with a 73% drop reported, following an outbreak last month in the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell.

The Benton Franklin Health District reported that more than 40% of known new cases in March in Franklin County were at the prison.

The community transmission level in the Tri-Cities area, which considers both the new case rate and the percentage of positive test results confirmed in laboratories, was rated at moderate for this past week.

Because so many people now do home tests for COVID-19 with results rarely reported to public health officials, the Benton Franklin Health District is more concerned about hospital data.

That data also looks good, Hill said.

The number of patients at hospitals in Benton and Franklin Counties was just under 2%, as reported this past week.

That includes patients at the Richland, Kennewick, Pasco and Prosser hospitals being admitted for treatment of COVID-19 or hospitalized for other reasons but also testing positive for COVID-19.

The BA.2 subvariant of omicron now accounts for 62% of all cases in the state of Washington, compared to 73% a week ago.

The remainder of cases were the original omicron. The BA.2 subvariant is more infectious.

Tri-Cities COVID vaccinations

Despite the importance of COVID-19 booster vaccinations for the elderly and others at high risk of serious illness, the percentage of the eligible Tri-Cities area population who have received the boosters remained unchanged in the past week.

Statewide 58.5% of people 12 and older have received at least one booster shot, but that drops to 50.6% in Benton County and 42.6% in Franklin County.

People completing their initial vaccination — two shots of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine — increased 0.1 percentage points in both Benton and Franklin counties this past week.

In Washington state 71.9% of residents ages 5 and older have completed their initial vaccination. In Benton County it is 59.7% and in Franklin County it’s 56.7%.